secretsauce's blog

On July 21st this year, the Hellenic Coast Guard received an SOS call from a migrant ship southeast of the Greek island of Karpathos. The vessel was carrying 217 migrants and refugees from Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Sudan.

They were transferred to Sitia in Crete, where they were met and assisted by the local authorities and IOM Greece staff.

One of the 217 on the boat was Omid (not his real name), a 21 year old Syrian, who shared the story of his journey from Syria to Europe, leading up to his rescue on July 21st.

According to UNICEF, one child in ten is growing up in a conflict zone. Many are forced to flee, either with their families, or unaccompanied, becoming even more vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking. Dozens have tragically lost their lives in the Mediterranean en route to Europe.

The number of children arriving on Europe’s shores has doubled from last year. Over 190,000 sought asylum in the European Union between January and September in 2015, compared to 98,000 in the same period in 2014.

It is with great enthusiasm that I am now writing to you in my capacity as the Director of ITC. It has been six years since I was last in this post. I am pleased to be back and to meet anew the people with whom I had worked with in many great projects as well as new colleagues in ITC.

The Telerad Centre was initially set up in Manila in 2012 as a response to the growing demands of the various IOM migration health assessment projects. In line with new technologies, IOM has been strengthening its capacity in diagnostics of pulmonary tuberculosis with the use of digital radiology systems.